1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to industrial mass-produced structural building modular unit or other similiar products such as a stackable room-module or other product from which a motel or hotel or apartment or hospital or nursing facility or extended care unit or housing or office building or the like, may be built, or more particularly to a novel molding machine and method of mass-producing such room modules or similiar products.
2. PRIOR ART
In my prior art molding machine described in my U.S. Pat. Number 3,853,452, there is disclosed a molding machine and method of industrial, mass-producing concrete building module units or modules with repetitive use and accuracy. In accordance with the prior art invention, the molding machine produces a modular unit with draft-free walls, square corners and an offset corners by featuring parallel-moving interior and exterior wall forming panels which are normal to a pre-cast concrete floor and interior corner panels which move along room diagonals into and out of molding positions. The interior and exterior wall-forming panels and corner panels are interlocked and spaced apart to form a cavity for pouring and setting concrete therein to form vertical, monolithic walls with the pre-cast floor. The parallel movable interior and exterior wall-forming panels and corner panels are suspended and movable on a frame having a super-structure which can be lifted above the formed monolithic concrete walls to release the molded concrete room modules from the molding machine.
Other attempts in the prior art for molding hollow concrete articles such as vaults employed complicated forms which were assembled for pouring of concrete between retaining walls. These forms were later disassembled after the formed concrete was set. While such prior art methods and apparatus were adequate for their intended purpose, they did not lend themselves for industrially, mass-produced modular units or modules, since it was difficult to reassemble the forms after each pouring and to repeat the same performance in a relatively short period of time.
Accordingly, there still exists a pressing need for a truly industrial means and method for mass-producing concrete products such as modular units or room modules for motels, hotels, apartments, hospitals, stores, offices, nursing and extended care facilities and houses, which means and method are efficient, accurate, easy to operate to produce a sound structural and architecturally artistic modular unit or room module and, more particularly, a concrete product such as a room room module having vertical walls and floor which are poured and casted simultaneously.